You Didn't Think There Was a Bubble

Submission 957

About

You Didn't Think There Was a Bubble refers to a catchphrase and caption meme format based on an image of the character Mark Baum, portrayed by actor Steve Carell, from the 2015 film The Big Short. The reaction image has been used together with captions about various seemingly overinflated and overly popular things, building a humorous analogy with overinflated financial markets. Additionally, a subformat known as It's the Bottom. Buy Everything, based on another image of the same character, also saw spread.

Origin

The 2015 biographical financial comedy-drama film The Big Short follows a group of hedge fund managers and financial experts as they uncover a major housing bubble in the United States economy.

On September 22nd, 2015, the official trailer for The Big Short premiered.^[1] In the trailer, Steve Carell's character Mark Baum, based on American investor Steven Eisman, calls out American banks on fraud (1:42 mark, shown below).

- It's fueled by stupidity
- But that's not stupidity, it's fraud.

In the full film, a different shot of Carell is used.

On July 21st, 2023, X^[2] / Twitter user @Nugjokes posted a still image of Carell from the scene with the caption, “Bottle girls are getting jobs as Real Estate agents and you didn’t think there was a bubble?” The post (shown below) garnered over 370 reposts and 4,700 likes in nine months.

Spread

Later on July 21st, 2023, X^[3] user @MogTheUrbanite posted a Lookism meme based on the format that received over 529,000 views prior to the account going private (shown below).

The format saw further spread on X / Twitter in the following month. For example, on August 1st, 2023, X^[4] user @DagoSupremacy posted a meme that gained over 630 likes in eight months (shown below, left). On August 15th, Redditor crayon001 posted a meme about NPC Streaming that garnered over 110 upvotes in /r/IndianStockMarket^[5] eight months.

It's the Bottom, Sell Everything

Starting on December 18th, 2023, It's the Bottom, Sell Everything, a similar meme format based on the same character gained minor spread. On that day, X^[6] user @Jetskigrizzly posted the earliest found meme based on the format that received over 930 reposts and 17,000 likes in five months (shown below).